Those Oh so Sophisticated San Franciscans

[vraiblonde]

 

[Tonio]

But when I think of St. Mary's County there's just nothing that really comes to mind as a unifying or rallying point for the population. You go to work, you come home, and you leave the county to do most other things.

I think that's partly because of the influence of the base, which brings together people from many different areas of the nation.

You're right that the local flavor in St. Mary's can be hard to find. These days, you're most likely to find it in Ridge or the 7th District, or in parts of the Leonardtown area. Elsewhere in the county, I don't know how many people have even heard of stuffed ham. The base has been here 60 years and there still isn't a lot of interaction between the base employees and the descendants of the original families. I think it's interesting that in the last commissioner election here, all the non-natives were voted out for various reasons.

I've heard a lot about St. George's Island becoming gentrified, with the watermen families dying out and/or moving away because they can't afford to live there anymore.

 

[jazz lady]

The base has been here 60 years and there still isn't a lot of interaction between the base employees and the descendants of the original families.

That brings up an interesting point. My mom married a sailor who grew up in NJ and was stationed at the base. Her family goes back for many generations in St. Mary's County. I've always considered myself "county" even though we didn't come back here until I was about 7 or 8, but am still considered a bit of an "outsider" because of my father. I always laughingly call myself a "half-breed" but it still amazes me that me and my siblings were and still are treated this way.

 

[vraiblonde]

Military towns (especially small ones) are typically kind of a mishmash. I think St. Mary's has lots of character - softball games, redneck bars, fishing, crabbing, church picnics with homemade stuffed ham. It's just that a lot of people don't care for that sort of thing. I do, so I always liked it in St. Mary's.

 

[Bruzilla]

Navy people make about 1/3 of the population down here, and many of the rest are either former Navy or support the Navy in one way or another. Aside from Virginia Beach or San Diego I don't know many cities that are more focused on bases than this place, so I hesitate to agree with you that the base is the major factor in St. Mary's. I think it's the absence of any major city or town. Where's the focal point of St. Mary's? Leonardtown? Lexington Park? Mechanicsville? There's no real focus, there's no real team to support, and there's no real social interaction as you usually have to go out of the county to attend a real event... unless you count the fair or oyster extravaganza, and those aren't very defining events.

 

[Hessian]

Yesterday and Today in St Mary's

I was trapped in a wet weekend beach cottage and this old tome was worth looking through. Though written in the 1950's it had a theme of disappointment with change and dreams that had fallen on hard times.

I can't honestly remeber be treated like an outsider when I came down to teach in 1985 but I was confronted with the slower pace of life and the overt friendliness of the locals.---a factor that has sadly faded in the past 20 years.

I believe the So Md culture that everyone is pondering actually faded even before 1930. Isolated communities of fishermen and tobacco farmers. Dirt roads that led to a tavern and a gas station. Black communities that generally were unchanged for dozens of years. Sawmills and canneries as well as lonely beach cottages and steam boat landings.


THAT my friends is the lost culture of So Md. The population was very thinly spread and mostly unchanged since the Civil War. (Calvert's pop was identical when comparing 1860 & 1950.)

I would like to pay $1000.00 for one day of experiencing life in So Md in 1905.